2023-09-24 04:00:00
How can you be a happy, fulfilled parent rather than a parent who constantly doubts your skills and often feels guilty? How to find the right balance between permissiveness and authoritarianism? Psychologist and bestselling author Marc Pistorio takes stock of the different attachment styles and educational practices that allow parents and children to flourish in his new book published by Édito, Secure parent, secure child.
To write this book intended for the general public, Marc Pistorio examined the most recent psychological and neuropsychological studies on the subject of the attachment bond and the parent-child bond and popularized the results of all this research.
“It’s first and foremost a book to relieve parents of guilt, to tell them that there are things to do, there are things possible,” he said in an interview from Los Angeles.
Secure parent, secure child | Marc Pistorio, Éditions Édito, 280 pages Photo provided by Éditions Édito, Ron Norrish
“Instead of saying to yourself: do this, do that, and adhere to a new model other than “helicopter” or “free range” or “permissive”, I tell people what I would have liked to tell them to reassure them. Parents are not stupid: why not refer to their capacity for discernment, to their intelligence, and tell them what we know, what we observe? »
“My message is: choose your education for your particular child. Start from him, go from there rather than bringing into the family a model that may not even be compatible with your personality, your attachment style or your parenting style. »
The psychologist and speaker has read extensively on the subject over the past three years.
“I explain what the research says, how a child develops, what the child’s stages of development are, so that parents better understand that at a certain age, they cannot ask a certain thing. »
Attachment style
Marc Pistorio wanted parents to be able to identify their attachment style.
“Are they pretty anxious?” Rather avoidant? They can categorize themselves and say to themselves: I am secure. We know that the parent’s attachment style greatly influences the child’s attachment style. If the parent is anxious, the child is at great risk of becoming an anxious attachment style themselves and having a relationship that comes with the challenges of anxiety. »
He also wanted to give parents a reflection on their style of education—-.
“As a parent, we waver between permissiveness and authority, perpetually seeking the happy medium. I wanted to tell parents what the research says. When a parent is very authoritarian, they lack a certain dimension and when they are too permissive, they also lack another dimension. »
“Responsivity”
These two dimensions, in education, are what we call “responsivity”, explains Marc Pistorio.
“It’s a word borrowed from English that cannot be translated. Responsibility means how the parent is warm, supportive, how they assist the child in their daily challenges, in their daily difficulties. »
The other dimension is a dimension of requirement.
“How does the parent make requests, is able to control certain behaviors of the child, able to practice a certain benevolent authority? »
These two dimensions are necessary, he adds.
“We know that a child without limits is a child who will not function well socially. And a child, on the contrary, who is with parents who are hyper-controlling, as in the upbringing of helicopter parents, does not feel loved. He is into performance and has a lot of difficulty socially. »
EXTRACT
« Children who have developed a secure attachment in early childhood benefit from it from the start of their schooling: they demonstrate perseverance, adequate control of impulses and emotions and a level of concentration adapted to school demands. Stress, anxiety and anger never become an obstacle to learning and development. They are therefore free to dedicate their vital energy and their mental space to the joy of socializing and the satisfaction of their intellectual curiosity. »
Marc Pistorio is a psychologist and mediator. He holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and is a member of the Order of Psychologists of Quebec—. His book Tell me who you love, I’ll tell you who you are (Editorial, 2015) has sold more than 40,000 copies. He will present two conferences at the Théâtre Le Gesù in Montreal on September 27 and October 4.
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